Palliative care

Palliative care is a specialty new medical science & our society can facilitates professional development and support for our members and promotes the practice of palliative medicine. Our members are medical practitioners who provide care for people with a life threatening illness. People with advanced incurable illness have a right to quality palliative care. We are committed to provide care and support to them and their families, aiming to meet different human needs – physical, psychological, social and spiritual and even extending the care into the bereavement period.  That dying is a natural process and we do not hasten death or postpone it.

Aim of Palliative care:
• Provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
• Affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
• Intends neither to hasten nor postpone death;
• Integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
• Offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
• Offers a support system to help the family cope during the patient’s illness and in their bereavement;
• Uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
• Will enhance the quality of life, and will also positively influence the course of illness;
• Is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction
with other therapies that are implemented to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.
Among the features of palliative care that make it conducive to a human rights approach are:
• The goal of palliative care is quality of life. Quality of life relates to an individual’s subjective satisfaction with life and a quality of life assessment usually looks at four domains: physical, social, emotional  psychological) and spiritual (existential). Quality of life changes as an individual’s experience and expectations change.
• Palliative care provides total care: physical, psychosocial and spiritual. No one element of care is more important than another, although it is true that when a patient is in severe pain, it is difficult for the patient to focus on psychosocial issues until the pain is controlled.

Resource:
Recognized training centre : Government: Nill
Non-government : Afzalulness Foundation

Post graduation: Currently certificate course is going on Palliative care center in Bangabandu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.

Resource Contact persons: